South Carolina will expect to be paid another $100 million if the federal government by April 10 fails again to remove 1 metric ton of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium from the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site.
Under a 2003 agreement with the federal government, South Carolina is authorized to fine DOE up to $100 million annually for every year past Jan. 1, 2016, that the plutonium remains at Savannah River.
The state so far in 2019 has not been as vocal about the pursuit of the money from the federal government as it has been in past years. But Robert Kittle, a spokesman for S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson, said it isn’t necessary to announce the penalty.
The agreement gave DOE well over a decade to remove the material from South Carolina or convert it into commercial nuclear reactor fuel at the now-canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at Savannah River. When neither happened, South Carolina at the start of 2016 began imposing a fine of $1 million a day up to the annual cap of $100 million. It says it has accrued the maximum amount in the last three years and is counting up again for 2019 – totaling $316 million by Thursday. “The penalty kicks in automatically if the plutonium has not been removed,” Kittle said.
The Energy Department has not yet paid the money, prompting the state to file three lawsuits since 2016. The fines from previous years are tied up in a Jan 8, 2018, case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. That suit initially only sought money from one year, but was later amended to include the $300 million total through April 10, 2018. The parties – South Carolina and the Energy Department – said in a Nov. 28 joint status report that they believe the matter can be resolved without going to trial, but did not go into detail on how they would achieve that. Neither party will comment on the matter, since the case is still open.
